Student Blog

What is it like on placement? By @Edwards92Sophie

What is it like on placement?

Sooo, this week Christine and I have been lucky enough to be on placement at the wonderful Gravity Road. Check them out – they are great: http://gravityroad.com/It’s been madness. But the good kind of madness. The type you want to bath in, not avoid.

Here is a little summary day-by-day and overall learnings from week 1!

Day 1.

Arrive prepared to get stuck in instantly. We did. In at 11, meet everyone by 11.30, briefed by 12.30, presenting to the senior team at 3.

Stay calm. Remember you can do it. Think of all the work you’ve done on Metro. Coming up with ideas in a short amount of time is doable.

Get out of the office – it may be a quiet environment and realistically no good ideas are going to come out of whispering to your partner.

Day 2.

ZZZzzzzzz. Meeting new people and being ‘on’ is tiring (for me anyway). You’ll realise how relaxed you are at school. Also remember you’ll be juggling school and ‘work work’ now. So prepare for long days. How should you divide them up is up to you. But do you really want to not be doing ‘work work’ during work hours? I don’t. An hour in the morning is more digestible for me than 2 hours at night when you are tired. Remember to socialise with your new friends but don’t let your danish art director talk to the CD and ask her if she wants a snog… yes that did happen. A slight miscommunication around the popular frozen yogurt franchise.

Day 3.

Do not steal anyones chair. They will find you down. And they will make you pay. (sorry Tom). Stay for beers on the rooftop terrace. Say yes. To as much as you can. Seriously. Christine & I ended up being able to help out on a pitch by making a mood video over night – and they used it (result). Fun. Exciting. In the end, what do you have to lose? Opportunity is now here (as Marc says) – yes. yes. yes.

Day 4.

Be ready to turn around ideas in a few hours. At school you forget how much people appreciate it. Because at school you are only doing it for yourself. Whereas in an office you are now doing it for a company alongside yourself. Listen to all feedback. Everything anyone says can help you. Always ask people to clarify on feedback if you don’t know what they 100% mean. Feedback is basically other peoples 6 hat opinions on your work. Remember that.

LEARNINGS:

Everything in an agency happens 10x faster than at school. A brief in the morning, will mean ideas in the afternoon.

The moment you work on something that could go live it becomes A LOT more exciting.

Never stop pushing your ideas – even if they aren’t on brief share them with the CD vocally as they may fit into something else they want to do for the brand

Arrive early. If the day starts at 9.30, people are in at 9. You should be there to. Then you get the juicy stuff.

No job is too small. From resizing an image to making big brand ideas. Neither is more important. People remember when you were able to save their bacon by resizing an image.

SMILE.

Try your best to scare the current teams.

It’s all about decks (funny when the New Zealand creative team tell you).

6 hat your ideas before anyone else does.

Finding time for outside of agency work is hard.

Learn the office in jokes to fit in quicker!

Show off the skills you have – if you can animate, make something where you animate – otherwise, how will they know?

I’m sure there are many more, but I’ve forgotten them.

Overall it’s been a week which has made me hungry for advertising again – Thanks for having us for the first week Gravity Road 🙂